A lot of things have been happening here on the little deer island. I had a couple visiters who all chose to come at the busiest possible time, making meeting with them quite hectic. My old beloved roommate Siyu came through Korea for a week's stay after his stay in China, but because he was staying mostly in Seoul it was difficult to meet up with him due to my tight schedule and we ended up not meeting.
Another Fulbrighter contacted me and said she was working with professor Jeong Geun-Sik of Seoul National University while on Sabbatical from her position at Century College teaching disabilities studies. We managed to meet up yesterday morning and I regretfully sent her off unaccompanied to do some sightseeing at Aeyangwon while I bathed the residents at the hospital.
A third and quite unexpected visitor was my big brother in the capoeira world, Angelo, who came all the way to Yeosu to support his little cousin in the world inline roller skating championships. We met up on Thursday night in Yeosu and saw some Colombians and Koreans burn up the Americans on the 500 and 1000 meter sprints. Then we had some Samgyeopsal with his little cousin and another racer and got a motel before heading out the next morning to watch some more races in the blistering Korean Summer.
From Yeosu I headed to Daegu where I met up with a Kang JeSuk sonsaengnim and a representative of a certain NGO working on issues affecting Hibakusha in Korea. Hibakusha (korean: Pipokcha 피폭자) is of course the Japanese word for “bomb victim” which refers to the atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had not realized that over 10% of Hibakusha about 20% of the overall fatalities from the Hiroshima bomb were Koreans, mostly brought to Japan to work in factories or coal mines. Theirs is a sad history, in which they were forced by economic conditions or military orders to deploy to Japan to work for the Japanese war machine and then bombed by the Americans. They returned to Korea only to be ostracized due to their physical scars and receive little sympathy in a society which did not have much room to sympathize with those who had suffered from the American bombing of Japan. They were often mistaken for Hansen's disease patients due to the scars left by the radiation wave which had caused their skin to shed from their bodies like thin bark from a tree.
The NGO rep is herself a second generation hibakusha who has had a series of hip surgeries due to avascular necrosis of the hip joint. They suspect that it is related to the fact that her mother was in Hiroshima and had radiation sickness due to the atomic fallout, but they cannot get recognition from the Japanese government in order to receive support that is given to hibakusha. Avascular necrosis is usually caused by alcoholism or steroid use, but its other causes are unknown. I suspect that maybe her condition is caused by a hormone imbalance resulting from the radiation that her mother was exposed to. We had Daegu Makchang, a specialty of Daegu and the only worthy feature of Daegu cuisine.
After our meal I went with Kang sonsaengnim to Hapcheon where we stopped into a inn run by a nice auntie. An ethnomusicologist from the University of Toronto, Joshua Pilzer, was living there while studying the folk songs of Korean hibakusha. He has also studied the folk songs of Korean comfort women. It turns out he went to Evergreen State College in Olympia so he's well familiar with my home town. He had some Polish vodka so we went up to the roof and polished that off with the Kang sonsaengnim while discussing various philosophical topics.
The next day we went to the “Peace House,” the headquarters of the NGO advocating for Korean Hibakusha. We met up with two first generation Hibakusha in their 60's. Bae DongNok is a Korean Japanese man who was only several months old when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, giving him lifelong health problems. He has healthy children and does work singing Korean traditional songs for Japanese schools to expose schoolchildren to the history of Koreans during imperial Japan. Another man seemed fairly healthy himself but he had lost several children at childbirth to birth defects. We drove to a village where many of the original hibakusha had settled. There we visited the house of an old woman and her two daughters. The father had passed away several days before. The daughters were both mentally disabled. One could not speak at all and the other could speak but could not hold a topical conversation. She was somewhat unaware that her father had passed away several days before. They lived there gardening small plots of land, in a state of poverty which one rarely sees in modern Korea. The mother seemed worried about what would happen to her daughters when she passed away. Kang sonsaengnim was trying to talk the second and less disabled daughter into joining a group picnic the next day in Kangwondo at Inje, but she was somewhat reluctant to leave the house.
Update Sept. 9th
Now it is Friday and I am in Seoul. I stayed up all night talking with the other volunteers. A Buddhist monk came to volunteer and we spent most of the night talking about Buddhist practice, yoga, Christianity, religion, film, politics, etc. I went to work at 5:00 am and then had breakfast and took the bus to Seoul. Getting ready for Chuseok and my departure from Korea in a couple days.
I had been planning to visit Japan one last time before I left Korea, but I decided against it so that I could spend some more time in Sorokdo and then a few days in Seoul before leaving. I called Suzuki-san, my host in Tokyo, to tell him I was not coming and I heard that he has signed up for the cleanup crews at Fukushima. Suzuki is a contract electrical engineer for power plants and he has worked in some 30 countries around the world in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, etc. He also traveled to many places when he was a Buddhist monk including pilgrimages around the United States. He lived briefly in the Seattle area as well.
He's in his mid 50's and unmarried so he decided that it's better that he risk his life than younger people. I could tell that there was something eating at him last time I talked to him but I wasn't sure what it was. He said that there is a 10-year contract for working on the cleanup crew at Fukushima. I hope he is not hurt by working there, it's probably one of the most dangerous places in the world to work. But I believe he is the right person for the job.
I talked to my dad and heard that he is going to visit Japan for the one-year anniversary of his brothers passing. The last thing I did before I came to Korea was attend his wake on October 13th. So I guess everything has come full circle. Time to get back to putting my life together and learning how to be a grown-up in America.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
The Little Deer Island
It's been a week since I arrived at Sorokdo, which translates literally to "Little Deer Island." The reason for the name is the shape of the island, which resembles an animal of some kind if one looks at the map. But it does happen to be inhabited by quite a few deer including, reportedly, some albino deer as well as wild boar.
It's a very interesting place to be. The volunteers are mostly around my age, and it's a great experience to be working as part of a team of Korean young people. We are "individual volunteers" who stay for several weeks at a time but there are also "group volunteers" which come to the island and stay for a shorter period of time. Among the other volunteers are some Christian missionaries who do leprosy volunteering projects in China as well.
The schedule is from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM. We wake up early, and go to the hospital (really an assisted care facility) where we wake the residents to change their diapers and get their breakfast ready. Breakfast is usually finished by 6:30 and then we eat, and rest until 9:00 AM. Then we go back and help them wash their faces and hands, and before long change diapers again and get ready for lunch. In the afternoon we escort them to physical therapy and Karaoke, and take them for walks in the park or visit with them.
Sorokdo Island is basically a vestige of Japanese colonialism. The entire island is a state-owned leprosy hospital. About 550 residents currently reside here, though the island once held 6000. Most live in the villages, but if they can no longer manage to live by themselves in the village they are moved into the old folks ward in the hospital, which is where the volunteers come in. The volunteers also help out in the village with regular activities such as housework and cooking, cleaning, gardening, but i haven't been able to visit there as a volunteer because we are needed in the wards right now.
The patients in the wards range from 70 to 100 years old. Many of them are blind. Some are missing both legs. It's interesting to see how they get along, as different parts of their body fail them. They all have very distinct personalities as well. There is one guy we call "grandfather pervert" is a double-leg amputee with half-body paralysis. He asks pretty young lady volunteers to help him with something and then grabs their arm. We try to make sure that only the men have to change his diaper.
In our ward there are about 35 patients, with more women than men. Mostly I am responsible for eight men in the men's room, but I make rounds and visit with all the elders. Some have lost most of their social skills and can't really communicate. Some are quite lucid but they have no motor skills. Some don't have any appetite but can speak and interact quite well. One guy can barely move at all, I think he's suffering some sort of generalized paralysis which may be going untreated, but he always eats his entire meal. There is one guy in our ward, Jeong Gye-sik haraboji, who has all his wits about him, he can see well and speak very clearly but he has lost most of his fingers and both legs. He said he lost both legs to frostbite one night after a bout of heavy drinking when he was living in the village. He's 70 years old and he has a friend who can walk and do most things by himself except speak. So they get around pretty well between the two of them. Jeong Gye-sik is like the boss in the ward, he knows what time everything needs to be done and exactly how it has to be done, so I always ask him if I have a question. His nose is collapsed and his eyelids droop low giving him a glazed over expression but he's quite lucid and detail-oriented.
I've had some good conversations with some grandmothers. One lived with an American Soldier in Pusan when she was in her 20s, probably during or before the Korean war. Then she caught leprosy when she was 30 and moved to Sorokdo. She can't speak very much Korean or English, but she understands everything in English and Korean and her accent is very clear when she does speak English. There is also a grandmother who they call "Miguk Halmoni" who is reportedly born of an American father. I had trouble figuring out how that could be since she was born before the war and it would have to be an American missionary or perhaps a businessman of some sort. She seems to understand English but she doesn't speak at all so it's hard to know anything about her past.
One grandmother told me that she knew a lot of Japanese people before the war and she thought the Japanese are very warm-hearted people. She's blind and has her legs amputated. It was nice to hear such a sincere sentiment from a grandmother on an island that is strongly associated with the worst abuses of Japanese colonialism.
There is a volunteer here who has been working for three years. We call him "uncle," he is a lay buddhist with a shaved head and wears monk's clothes. He insists he is not a monk but has been wandering around as kind of a layman-monk for some 30 years. Before he was here he worked in a Buddhist Hospice for the elderly and another leprosy village. He also spent several years in a Buddhist temple. He's an interesting old guy, 50 years old, likes to drink and take walks in the forest. He showed me all the woodland paths on the island. After breakfast one morning we went for a walk and spotted 15 deer. Some of them are pretty big too, with 2-foot antlers.
As time goes on, the government will have to find something to do with this island. The villages are slowly emptying as people pass away or move away if they have children who can afford to support them elsewhere. There is a lot I could write about the history of this island. Many of the residents were estranged from their families due to government insistence on quarantine. Many of them performed a lot of forced labor. The oldest man in my ward worked on the island during the Japanese occupation and did a lot of labor during that time. Now he is blind but he can still walk fine. But he has a kind of nervous disorder where he is always mumbling and grunting and fidgeting. But he can communicate simple things like if he's hungry or needs to go to the bathroom. He doesn't wear a diaper and can use the toilet by himself.
It's almost time to go back to work. I will leave it at that for now. My friend Siyu is scheduled to visit this afternoon, I hope he doesn't miss his bus from Seoul.
It's a very interesting place to be. The volunteers are mostly around my age, and it's a great experience to be working as part of a team of Korean young people. We are "individual volunteers" who stay for several weeks at a time but there are also "group volunteers" which come to the island and stay for a shorter period of time. Among the other volunteers are some Christian missionaries who do leprosy volunteering projects in China as well.
The schedule is from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM. We wake up early, and go to the hospital (really an assisted care facility) where we wake the residents to change their diapers and get their breakfast ready. Breakfast is usually finished by 6:30 and then we eat, and rest until 9:00 AM. Then we go back and help them wash their faces and hands, and before long change diapers again and get ready for lunch. In the afternoon we escort them to physical therapy and Karaoke, and take them for walks in the park or visit with them.
Sorokdo Island is basically a vestige of Japanese colonialism. The entire island is a state-owned leprosy hospital. About 550 residents currently reside here, though the island once held 6000. Most live in the villages, but if they can no longer manage to live by themselves in the village they are moved into the old folks ward in the hospital, which is where the volunteers come in. The volunteers also help out in the village with regular activities such as housework and cooking, cleaning, gardening, but i haven't been able to visit there as a volunteer because we are needed in the wards right now.
The patients in the wards range from 70 to 100 years old. Many of them are blind. Some are missing both legs. It's interesting to see how they get along, as different parts of their body fail them. They all have very distinct personalities as well. There is one guy we call "grandfather pervert" is a double-leg amputee with half-body paralysis. He asks pretty young lady volunteers to help him with something and then grabs their arm. We try to make sure that only the men have to change his diaper.
In our ward there are about 35 patients, with more women than men. Mostly I am responsible for eight men in the men's room, but I make rounds and visit with all the elders. Some have lost most of their social skills and can't really communicate. Some are quite lucid but they have no motor skills. Some don't have any appetite but can speak and interact quite well. One guy can barely move at all, I think he's suffering some sort of generalized paralysis which may be going untreated, but he always eats his entire meal. There is one guy in our ward, Jeong Gye-sik haraboji, who has all his wits about him, he can see well and speak very clearly but he has lost most of his fingers and both legs. He said he lost both legs to frostbite one night after a bout of heavy drinking when he was living in the village. He's 70 years old and he has a friend who can walk and do most things by himself except speak. So they get around pretty well between the two of them. Jeong Gye-sik is like the boss in the ward, he knows what time everything needs to be done and exactly how it has to be done, so I always ask him if I have a question. His nose is collapsed and his eyelids droop low giving him a glazed over expression but he's quite lucid and detail-oriented.
I've had some good conversations with some grandmothers. One lived with an American Soldier in Pusan when she was in her 20s, probably during or before the Korean war. Then she caught leprosy when she was 30 and moved to Sorokdo. She can't speak very much Korean or English, but she understands everything in English and Korean and her accent is very clear when she does speak English. There is also a grandmother who they call "Miguk Halmoni" who is reportedly born of an American father. I had trouble figuring out how that could be since she was born before the war and it would have to be an American missionary or perhaps a businessman of some sort. She seems to understand English but she doesn't speak at all so it's hard to know anything about her past.
One grandmother told me that she knew a lot of Japanese people before the war and she thought the Japanese are very warm-hearted people. She's blind and has her legs amputated. It was nice to hear such a sincere sentiment from a grandmother on an island that is strongly associated with the worst abuses of Japanese colonialism.
There is a volunteer here who has been working for three years. We call him "uncle," he is a lay buddhist with a shaved head and wears monk's clothes. He insists he is not a monk but has been wandering around as kind of a layman-monk for some 30 years. Before he was here he worked in a Buddhist Hospice for the elderly and another leprosy village. He also spent several years in a Buddhist temple. He's an interesting old guy, 50 years old, likes to drink and take walks in the forest. He showed me all the woodland paths on the island. After breakfast one morning we went for a walk and spotted 15 deer. Some of them are pretty big too, with 2-foot antlers.
As time goes on, the government will have to find something to do with this island. The villages are slowly emptying as people pass away or move away if they have children who can afford to support them elsewhere. There is a lot I could write about the history of this island. Many of the residents were estranged from their families due to government insistence on quarantine. Many of them performed a lot of forced labor. The oldest man in my ward worked on the island during the Japanese occupation and did a lot of labor during that time. Now he is blind but he can still walk fine. But he has a kind of nervous disorder where he is always mumbling and grunting and fidgeting. But he can communicate simple things like if he's hungry or needs to go to the bathroom. He doesn't wear a diaper and can use the toilet by himself.
It's almost time to go back to work. I will leave it at that for now. My friend Siyu is scheduled to visit this afternoon, I hope he doesn't miss his bus from Seoul.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Enter August: meditation on flying bone chips
I’m finishing up my third and final week at Aeyangwon Orthopedic Hospital Korea
Needless to say much of my time here is too boring to relate. It consisted of a lot of studying Korean, volunteering at Severance Hospital in Seoul , learning some Salsa and playing with some really good capoeira folks in Seoul
But the past month has been a ripe orchard of food for thought. In May I met a Japanese Buddhist monk on the streets of Seoul
I recognized him immediately as a Japanese monk and stopped him for a conversation. Takimoto-san told me that he was in Kangwondo working on an herb garden at an NGO called the DMZ Peace-Life Valley
My stay there was largely affected by the torrential rains. We had about 3 solid days of work and some days of intermittent work. But it was just as well because I was reminded how hard it is to work on an organic farm. The work was largely stoop labor, cutting grass with a scythe in the cornfields, pulling weeds, and transplanting sesame plants from one place to another. After about an hour of cutting grass (not to mention in boot-sucking mud), the groin muscles and thighs are totally exhausted. It made me think of the original capoeiristas, slaves and sharecroppers playing in rodas in their free-time between swinging a machete in the canefields. It takes another kind of strength to play beyond ones limits, and it reminds us why they are legends and we, merely their followers.
Every morning at 5:30 and every evening at 8:00 Takimotosan and I would chant/pray for an hour. Chanting is quite different from silent meditation. For me, Chanting is mentally much easier but also somewhat frustrating because the mind tends to wander incessantly during chanting. The drums reach a perfect synchronicity and everything else seems to disappear, but then the mind resurfaces in unexpected places and I ask myself “how long has my mind been wandering?” In silent meditation the focus is on the breath, and time seems to stretch out much longer, but the wanderings of the mind are entirely apparent.
I’m curious about the different mechanisms of the two types of meditation. Silent meditation aims at reduction of sensory input: closed eyes, silent room, focus on the breath. Mantric meditation infuses the practitioner with stimulus: drums, mantra, and open eyes (I usually don’t keep my eyes open because it’s too much of a distraction).
Takimoto-san’s grandfather was an engineer working in Korea Korea Japan
Takimoto-san’s situation reminds me of the distinction I often make between pilgrims and missionaries. Pilgrims are people who travel to foreign lands in order to learn, while missionaries are people who travel to foreign lands in order to teach. I like to think that there is a lot of pilgrim in the best missionaries, and that people can end up learning more than they bargained for while abroad. But the mormons and so many others are proof that simply traveling abroad does not result in learning from said culture.
After my stint on the DMZ, I came down to Yeosu in Jeollanamdo to stay at Aeyangwon, the hospital founded by RM Wilson. I finish my stay here on Friday. I’ve thankfully been kept fairly busy, and given a large comfortable house to myself. The days are spent in the surgery room or at the assisted living facility which houses some 65 geriatric recovered Hansen’s disease patients.
The assisted living facility, where I spend two days a week, is a home for those on government welfare who were disabled by Hansen’s disease. I mostly spend my time there scrubbing floors, mowing lawns, pushing wheelchairs, and making chit-chat with the staff and residents. There’s a feisty old woman from Taegu
The surgery room is in the main hospital. It is one of the busiest orthopedic surgery units in Korea
It is a strange experience to first step into a surgery room. Orthopedic surgery is essentially carpentry where the medium is bone rather than wood. It is all hammers, saws, nails, screws, wrenches, chisels, drills, scaffolding and vices. Yellow liquefied bone marrow is flying everywhere. The scent of burning flesh due to the vein cauterizing/cutting utensil is heavy in the air. It takes about 2 days to become 80% desensitized, but the amputation is still definitely a little bit creepy.
Every med student must decide between surgery and internal medicine. I’m not sure about which one is more appealing. I tend to think that my strengths lie more to the side of internal medicine. One of the turnoffs of internal medicine is the idea of doctor-as-deskjob. There is little hands-on activity, its all assessments, diagnoses and prescriptions. But I’ve come to see that surgery could potentially be an extremely boring field as well, if more lucrative. Surgeons specialize in the same handful of surgeries and perform them over and over again… in korea
Tomorrow is my last day in the surgery room. During the first week I observed, and over the past two weeks I started assisting in surgery. This means cutting sutures, holding suction, and holding the wound open while the doctor is cutting using claw/lever-like tools. I also pull the pins out of the bones and remove the scaffolding and metal joints. It’s a great challenge trying to memorize the order of the surgery so that I can do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Heart of Darkness in the Leper Colony
"The man marked by an X was stabbed by an inmate." Our great grandmother Bess Wilson scrawled this on the back of an old black and white photograph of Japanese gentlemen.
One can imagine the Photographer "OK, yes Mr. Sasaki and Suzuki, you sit on the ends and hold your katana. And Mr. Suho, you sit next to that foreboding X, four from the left. Very good. And when I say cheese, everybody sit stoically with a grim expression."
Suho Masasue, born 1885, was an elite young Japanese physician who had come to Korea in 1921. He graduated from Nagoya Medical college, and later received a PhD from Kyoto Imperial Medical College on the effects of morphine. He had traveled the world inspecting medical conditions in 1926-27. He then took a post as sanitary officer in Kyonggi province of the Japanese colony of Chosen.
He then volunteered for an assignment as the director of the Leprosarium on Sorok Island in Jeollanamdo province in 1933. The role was one of prestige. The young Japanese generals viewed the American's Leper colonies in the Philippines with jealousy. They too wanted to be seen as benevolent masters over a thankful but backward territory. Humanitarian efforts on behalf of the lepers would be a way to prove their benevolence, both to the Korean population and in the eyes of the world. In 1930, the Japanese government declared a policy of leprosy eradication in the colony. They would do this by compulsory quarantine of leprosy patients and forced sterilization.
Perhaps the jealousy did not only apply to the affection of the lepers, but also the affection of the Imperial House itself. The Empress wrote a poem to American Medical Missionary Robert Manton Wilson, praising his compassionate work. "Please comfort the lepers on my behalf, since I cannot be there myself."
For whatever reason, the Japanese felt the need to establish themselves as benevolent overlords. Some Japanese were apparently successful in that role. The second director, Dr. Hanai, successfully enacted a policy which was sensitive to the patient's culture and allowed them to live according to their own customs with reasonable amounts of work. The death rates at the hospital dropped under his leadership, and the patients remembered him as a benevolent father figure.
It's possible that Suho arrived in Korea with the best intentions and was corrupted over time by the nature of the colonial machine. His record leaves the impression that he was selected from among the best and brightest of Japanese physicians. In any case, he became enamored with the idea of himself as a benevolent saint of the leprosy patient community and possessed by the desire to expand the facilities at all cost. He ran the leprosarium like a penal colony, dividing the patients into six camps and preventing group organization.
Pak Soon Joo was a Korean patient who acted as a go-between for the Japanese and the lepers. He was blind and disabled, but he served as the representative for the Hospital Patients. He was in charge of collecting fees from fellow patients among other things. He extorted 80% of patients' holdings as donations for a giant statue of Dr. Suho in 1941. The patients were required to bow to the statue daily. For his efforts, he was awarded accolades from the Japanese Society for Leprosy Prevention which met in August 1941. The next month he was stabbed to death by a fellow patient, Lee Kil-yong. Lee Kil-yong had no use of his hands and was severely disabled himself. He had to fasten the knife around the stump of his wrist using a bandage. The murder was thus clumsy and slow, but effective as Lee Kil-yong managed to pierce the throat of his target while rolling with him on the ground.
From 1937 and the start of the Pacific war, death rates steadily climbed at Sorok Island Leprosarium due to war-time deprivations. They continue to climb after Japan declared war on the US. After the murder of Pak Soon Joo, a patient named Lee Chun-sang began to form his own plot for revenge. The son of a Korean Independence activist, Lee Chun-sang first acted by volunteering to play a role in a holiday theatre performance. When asked what role he wished to play, he declared that he would play in the sword dance. He was then seen regularly practicing kendo techniques on electrical poles with a wooden stick. He would move about draped in a large cloak even as the temperature increased during the hot Jeolla summer.
On June 20, 1942, his chance presented itself. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz dies of a tropical disease on a steamboat to the coast under Marlowe's supervision. It was an artistic liberty taken by Coppola that led Martin Sheen to cut Marlon Brando down like some giant water buffalo. But so did Dr. Suho, that would-be-humanitarian who set himself up as a living God on his own island of 6000 leprosy patients, meet his end.
As Dr. Suho walked past on a nearby road, Lee Chun-Sang took a sword from under his cloak and, with all his strength, ran it through the good doctor's abdomen. With what was left of his strength, he pulled the sword from the abdomen and stood for a moment before the horrified patients before collapsing. The patients, fearful for their lives, fell upon Lee Chun-Sang beating and kicking him. He was sentenced to death by a Japanese court. At the court, he gave an account of the brutality of Dr. Suho. The judge called on his fellow patient Choi Il-Bong to ask if he could confirm Lee's account. Choi denied Lee's account of the brutalities. Later he would be heard beating his breast and lamenting his damnation, "I killed Lee Chun-Sang." Oh the horror.
Conrad ends his novel with an encounter with the young aristocratic woman whom Kurtz refers to as "My Intended." She sees Kurtz as an angelic figure. Dr. Suho, likewise, must have been an angel to some. Myths of benevolence are not build purely on deception and cynical megalomania. But there is a seed of such cynicism which often sprouts when a man takes it upon himself to be an angel. How much that sprout of megalomania and cruelty is nurtured and allowed to grow determines the difference between man and tyrant.
I took my information from wikipedia, a memoir from my Great Uncle Johnny, and most importantly an article by Jeong Keun-sik of Seoul National University entitled "일제 말기의 소록도갱생원과 이춘상 사건" "Sorok Island rehabilitation hospital in the twilight of Japanese empire and the Lee Chun-Sang Incident"
One can imagine the Photographer "OK, yes Mr. Sasaki and Suzuki, you sit on the ends and hold your katana. And Mr. Suho, you sit next to that foreboding X, four from the left. Very good. And when I say cheese, everybody sit stoically with a grim expression."
He then volunteered for an assignment as the director of the Leprosarium on Sorok Island in Jeollanamdo province in 1933. The role was one of prestige. The young Japanese generals viewed the American's Leper colonies in the Philippines with jealousy. They too wanted to be seen as benevolent masters over a thankful but backward territory. Humanitarian efforts on behalf of the lepers would be a way to prove their benevolence, both to the Korean population and in the eyes of the world. In 1930, the Japanese government declared a policy of leprosy eradication in the colony. They would do this by compulsory quarantine of leprosy patients and forced sterilization.
Perhaps the jealousy did not only apply to the affection of the lepers, but also the affection of the Imperial House itself. The Empress wrote a poem to American Medical Missionary Robert Manton Wilson, praising his compassionate work. "Please comfort the lepers on my behalf, since I cannot be there myself."
For whatever reason, the Japanese felt the need to establish themselves as benevolent overlords. Some Japanese were apparently successful in that role. The second director, Dr. Hanai, successfully enacted a policy which was sensitive to the patient's culture and allowed them to live according to their own customs with reasonable amounts of work. The death rates at the hospital dropped under his leadership, and the patients remembered him as a benevolent father figure.
It's possible that Suho arrived in Korea with the best intentions and was corrupted over time by the nature of the colonial machine. His record leaves the impression that he was selected from among the best and brightest of Japanese physicians. In any case, he became enamored with the idea of himself as a benevolent saint of the leprosy patient community and possessed by the desire to expand the facilities at all cost. He ran the leprosarium like a penal colony, dividing the patients into six camps and preventing group organization.
Pak Soon Joo was a Korean patient who acted as a go-between for the Japanese and the lepers. He was blind and disabled, but he served as the representative for the Hospital Patients. He was in charge of collecting fees from fellow patients among other things. He extorted 80% of patients' holdings as donations for a giant statue of Dr. Suho in 1941. The patients were required to bow to the statue daily. For his efforts, he was awarded accolades from the Japanese Society for Leprosy Prevention which met in August 1941. The next month he was stabbed to death by a fellow patient, Lee Kil-yong. Lee Kil-yong had no use of his hands and was severely disabled himself. He had to fasten the knife around the stump of his wrist using a bandage. The murder was thus clumsy and slow, but effective as Lee Kil-yong managed to pierce the throat of his target while rolling with him on the ground.
From 1937 and the start of the Pacific war, death rates steadily climbed at Sorok Island Leprosarium due to war-time deprivations. They continue to climb after Japan declared war on the US. After the murder of Pak Soon Joo, a patient named Lee Chun-sang began to form his own plot for revenge. The son of a Korean Independence activist, Lee Chun-sang first acted by volunteering to play a role in a holiday theatre performance. When asked what role he wished to play, he declared that he would play in the sword dance. He was then seen regularly practicing kendo techniques on electrical poles with a wooden stick. He would move about draped in a large cloak even as the temperature increased during the hot Jeolla summer.
On June 20, 1942, his chance presented itself. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz dies of a tropical disease on a steamboat to the coast under Marlowe's supervision. It was an artistic liberty taken by Coppola that led Martin Sheen to cut Marlon Brando down like some giant water buffalo. But so did Dr. Suho, that would-be-humanitarian who set himself up as a living God on his own island of 6000 leprosy patients, meet his end.
As Dr. Suho walked past on a nearby road, Lee Chun-Sang took a sword from under his cloak and, with all his strength, ran it through the good doctor's abdomen. With what was left of his strength, he pulled the sword from the abdomen and stood for a moment before the horrified patients before collapsing. The patients, fearful for their lives, fell upon Lee Chun-Sang beating and kicking him. He was sentenced to death by a Japanese court. At the court, he gave an account of the brutality of Dr. Suho. The judge called on his fellow patient Choi Il-Bong to ask if he could confirm Lee's account. Choi denied Lee's account of the brutalities. Later he would be heard beating his breast and lamenting his damnation, "I killed Lee Chun-Sang." Oh the horror.
Conrad ends his novel with an encounter with the young aristocratic woman whom Kurtz refers to as "My Intended." She sees Kurtz as an angelic figure. Dr. Suho, likewise, must have been an angel to some. Myths of benevolence are not build purely on deception and cynical megalomania. But there is a seed of such cynicism which often sprouts when a man takes it upon himself to be an angel. How much that sprout of megalomania and cruelty is nurtured and allowed to grow determines the difference between man and tyrant.
I took my information from wikipedia, a memoir from my Great Uncle Johnny, and most importantly an article by Jeong Keun-sik of Seoul National University entitled "일제 말기의 소록도갱생원과 이춘상 사건" "Sorok Island rehabilitation hospital in the twilight of Japanese empire and the Lee Chun-Sang Incident"
Friday, November 5, 2010
Poetry and plenty
I met a friend who is majoring in Korean literature at Jeonnam University. She expressed interest in helping me translate some poetry of a famous leper poet, Han Ha-Oon. Here are the first drafts of translations of five poems. They are translated with some liberty, and some of them are not complete. But I think the spirit of the poems is more or less intact. I would like to post the Korean alongside so that fluent speakers can offer critique on these translations. It is my understanding, based on an encyclopedia of translated Korean poems, that these works have never been translated before. Others by Han Ha Oon, such as "Reed Pipe" and "Bluebird" have been translated.
It's difficult to provide here the Korean versions because I don't know the pronunciations of the Korean Hanja characters, but hopefully I will be able to figure it out. The translation is by no means perfect, but it's a fascinating expression of a man who grew up during the Japanese occupation and became famous for his lyrical expressions of the suffering of outcastes and the transience of our physical existence.
Upon reviewing the poems, they definitely paint an unique perspective on the experience of Hansen's disease patients of the time. In these five poems, we can see the progression of experience from being cast out of society to die alone. He is later committed to a leper colony-- Perhaps Sorok island?-- where he is perhaps subjected to electric shock therapy. He also experiences a wedding to another leprosy patient. As he remarks, the eyebrows have been drawn on to her face as make-up because Hansen's disease often causes the eyebrows to fall out in its early stages.
What can we make of the claim in the second poem that "I am the child of lepers." Is it to be taken literally? Perhaps he was one of the children that Japanese officials, as well as missionary doctors, hoped to prevent by forced sterilization. But we know that he was only infected with leprosy later. Perhaps it is only a poetic flourish not to be taken literally.
I was first made aware of Han Ha-Oon by the introduction in a bilingual version of Ko Eun's works entitled "The Sound of my Waves" in which Ko Eun recounts that he was first inspired to become a poet by Han Ha-Oon, the famous leper-poet. Ko Eun definitely carries on certain themes of Han Ha-Oon's such as the transience of the body and a despair of being caste out from materialistic society.
All translations are Copyright of Joji Kohjima 2010.
At the foot of the Zelkova tree
In the past as today
The watermill turns the destiny of every man
to soil and rice wine
Year by year, by turns, destiny is set afloat into life
Absently I recount this old story to you.
How under the zelkova I have come to live.
It was there under the zelkova that my forebears who begat me lived
It was there under the zelkova that they learned the ancient wisdom
that the strong live, and the weak die*
Now, stricken by disease, I have been caste out
The healthy people banished me to live there, under the zelkova
Since that day, the lonely zelkova has wept sparingly in the bottom of my heart
* This adage is a chinese 4-character saying or 사자성어. Here it is on naver:
適者生存 Literally: "the capable people may live"
I am not a Leper
My father is a leper
My mother is a leper
Myself, I am the child of lepers
But the truth is, I am not a leper
In the relation between heaven and earth
Between the flower and the butterfly
The love withn the sun and moon
becomes the stuff of life
Because the world laments this life
I, a man, am called a leper
Without even a birth registration,
I repeat the same old story
to an audience who cannot understand
No matter how I labor to become a whole person I cannot
I am an absurdity
But I am not a leper
I tell you truly I am a healthy person. Not a leper.
It all seems senseless
It would seem an impossible task for this world
A cry bursts forth
Softly dry the precious tears shed over
This love for which we can see no future
But rather beautifully forgetting,
As we weave this fleeting love song
As our hearts proceed
Let us swallow our tears
Cry out our song
To weave again this ephemeral tune of bittersweet blues
Towards the pain of our separation
Cast the flowers and cry out the song
悲愴 [비장] "Pathetique" (Tchaikovsky's symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 7)
In this isolated leprosy treatment center
There exist neither borders nor distinctions
Nor even bacteriology
Tchaikovsky's Pathetique on the radio waves
Moves me to tears
Now I am in the past, in my season of good health
It's as if the I of the present does not even exist here
Downstream of my long-anticipated destiny
I jettison my reality
In two, three pieces my reality shatters
Now everything is broken
It is as if only Tchaikovsky's Pathetique
stretches into infinity
Pity the Sick Marriage
Because we are soiled,
Though the cloudy blue horizon is broad,
There is no land for a leper to live
An abandoned man and an abandoned woman
If an old shoe finds its match
Might it be moved to weep and weep?
Have the gods ordained this auspicious event which pains to the bone?
Just for today the bride has drawn her eyebrows with a matchstick
And this artificial shroud is not lifted
5 colored confetti falls like snow
Beautifully is she preened
It's difficult to provide here the Korean versions because I don't know the pronunciations of the Korean Hanja characters, but hopefully I will be able to figure it out. The translation is by no means perfect, but it's a fascinating expression of a man who grew up during the Japanese occupation and became famous for his lyrical expressions of the suffering of outcastes and the transience of our physical existence.
Upon reviewing the poems, they definitely paint an unique perspective on the experience of Hansen's disease patients of the time. In these five poems, we can see the progression of experience from being cast out of society to die alone. He is later committed to a leper colony-- Perhaps Sorok island?-- where he is perhaps subjected to electric shock therapy. He also experiences a wedding to another leprosy patient. As he remarks, the eyebrows have been drawn on to her face as make-up because Hansen's disease often causes the eyebrows to fall out in its early stages.
What can we make of the claim in the second poem that "I am the child of lepers." Is it to be taken literally? Perhaps he was one of the children that Japanese officials, as well as missionary doctors, hoped to prevent by forced sterilization. But we know that he was only infected with leprosy later. Perhaps it is only a poetic flourish not to be taken literally.
I was first made aware of Han Ha-Oon by the introduction in a bilingual version of Ko Eun's works entitled "The Sound of my Waves" in which Ko Eun recounts that he was first inspired to become a poet by Han Ha-Oon, the famous leper-poet. Ko Eun definitely carries on certain themes of Han Ha-Oon's such as the transience of the body and a despair of being caste out from materialistic society.
All translations are Copyright of Joji Kohjima 2010.
At the foot of the Zelkova tree
In the past as today
The watermill turns the destiny of every man
to soil and rice wine
Year by year, by turns, destiny is set afloat into life
Absently I recount this old story to you.
How under the zelkova I have come to live.
It was there under the zelkova that my forebears who begat me lived
It was there under the zelkova that they learned the ancient wisdom
that the strong live, and the weak die*
Now, stricken by disease, I have been caste out
The healthy people banished me to live there, under the zelkova
Since that day, the lonely zelkova has wept sparingly in the bottom of my heart
* This adage is a chinese 4-character saying or 사자성어. Here it is on naver:
適者生存 Literally: "the capable people may live"
I am not a Leper
My father is a leper
My mother is a leper
Myself, I am the child of lepers
But the truth is, I am not a leper
In the relation between heaven and earth
Between the flower and the butterfly
The love withn the sun and moon
becomes the stuff of life
Because the world laments this life
I, a man, am called a leper
Without even a birth registration,
I repeat the same old story
to an audience who cannot understand
No matter how I labor to become a whole person I cannot
I am an absurdity
But I am not a leper
I tell you truly I am a healthy person. Not a leper.
It all seems senseless
It would seem an impossible task for this world
A cry bursts forth
Softly dry the precious tears shed over
This love for which we can see no future
But rather beautifully forgetting,
As we weave this fleeting love song
As our hearts proceed
Let us swallow our tears
Cry out our song
To weave again this ephemeral tune of bittersweet blues
Towards the pain of our separation
Cast the flowers and cry out the song
悲愴 [비장] "Pathetique" (Tchaikovsky's symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 7)
In this isolated leprosy treatment center
There exist neither borders nor distinctions
Nor even bacteriology
Tchaikovsky's Pathetique on the radio waves
Moves me to tears
Now I am in the past, in my season of good health
It's as if the I of the present does not even exist here
Downstream of my long-anticipated destiny
I jettison my reality
In two, three pieces my reality shatters
Now everything is broken
It is as if only Tchaikovsky's Pathetique
stretches into infinity
Pity the Sick Marriage
Because we are soiled,
Though the cloudy blue horizon is broad,
There is no land for a leper to live
An abandoned man and an abandoned woman
If an old shoe finds its match
Might it be moved to weep and weep?
Have the gods ordained this auspicious event which pains to the bone?
Just for today the bride has drawn her eyebrows with a matchstick
And this artificial shroud is not lifted
5 colored confetti falls like snow
Beautifully is she preened
Friday, October 29, 2010
Dr. Kim and the Women
Oct. 28, 04:00
“Like a fish that is drawn from its watery abode and thrown upon land: even so does this mind flutter. Hence should the realm of passions be shunned.”
-The Dhammapada
About a week in Kwangju so far. I bought a bicycle and toured the city a bit yesterday, which was a rewarding exercise. I made it out to the International Kimchi festival and sampled their Kimchi Bossam.
I’m feeling a bit accident prone lately. The day I met Dr. Linton, he told me a story about the time my great grandfather’s house burned to the ground. Apparently the Japanese emperor had given him a prize, and the prize was lost in the burning, so he was ordered by the Japanese generals to commit “hari kari” (actually pronounced hara kiri). He abstained of course. The day after hearing this story, Dr. Linton’s own mother’s house in North Carolina burned down.
The other day I went out to see Kwangju with my friend Mina, who is studying medicine at Chosun University. The last thing I asked her about was her parents, and she said she hardly gets a chance to see her father because only her mother comes down from Seoul. Then the next day she hears that her father has been hospitalized, that his cancer had metastasized, and she took off to Seoul. It called to mind the fact that my uncle passed away just two weeks after I paid him a visit for the second time.
I take this as a reminder that I always seem to take things personally when people have other things going on in their lives. A reminder that compared to my own trials, other people’s problems are usually much greater than my own, and more often than not have nothing to do with me. I realize that I am not a cause of disaster, but rather I am an incidental co-arising phenomenon to the disasters that occur around me, from which I always seem to emerge unscathed.
It’s 4:00 in the morning. My sleep and eating schedule has been mostly thrown off, perhaps due to lack of a proper study/work schedule. Yesterday I turned 23. I’d like to say “I don’t feel any older” but it wouldn’t be true. On this day I feel quite a bit older. Time carries us along like a river, drifting us ever closer to the source and the grande finale.
Oct. 29, 18:00
I had an energizing couple of days in the interim of this blog entry. I’ll post it as a reminder that the brain truly has a mind of its own (…?) and can right itself within a short time period.
I rode the bus to Yeosu and finally made the acquaintance of Dr. Kim In Kwon. He’s tall and wiry with shiny eyes and wavy white hair. He looks like the Korean version of Richard Gere in Dr. T and the women. Dr. Kim is of course the director of Aeyangwon Hospital and the president of the Wilson Leprosy Center. I’m not sure how these institutions operate exactly, but they are the fruit of Dr. RM Wilson senior’s work in Korea beginning a century prior.
Some time in the 1920s (oh yes, quite the historian I am) Dr. Wilson and his flock of lepers (about 1000 all told) made a mass exodus on foot from Kwangju to a Peninsula near Yeosu. The peninsula was bought with grants to the Leprosarium. I am not sure who posted the money that the peninsula itself was bought with (this information is written somewhere and I will update this later) but a large part of the work was simply getting enough funds to care for the plethora of patients who traversed the country on foot and crutch to receive treatment from the missionary doctors. Major donors included churches in the United States as well as the Japanese Empress. It’s about a 90 minute drive from Kwangju to the site on the highway, so we can imagine a herd of lepers, many of them blind and missing limbs, making the trek in communal fashion with whatever possessions they had over several days.
Today the hospital still stands on that peninsula. It later morphed into a polio treatment center, and then a rehabilitation center and an orthopedic hospital. The original hospital is now a museum housing various artifacts from the earlier days. I will post pictures when I get the ability to send emails from my cell phone.
Dr. Kim met me for lunch in between his 36 operations he performed that day. I was impressed by how good-natured he is even in the midst of an enormous workload. He told me that RM Wilson also worked very hard. This contrasts somewhat to Dr. Linton’s depiction of RMW. “He would leave work in the middle of the day to go hunting. My kind of man, that RM Wilson.” Dr. Linton also reported that RM Wilson was the emitter (this is not the word I am looking for...) of the quote “Those who played, stayed.” If I had to interpret the quote, I might guess he was talking about those who stayed in Korea vs. those who left. The ones who saw the task as an adventure and a game rather than a burden or a cross to bear were the ones who saw it through. Inevitably it is evocative of the late baseball announcer Yogi Berra. But it just might be the best piece of advice I could begin this sojourn with: those who played, stayed. It’s important not to take one’s mission too seriously.
I couldn't help but marvel at the protestant work ethic which made the hospital possible. Of course, the patients themselves built their own houses and tended their own gardens. And the labor that laid the bricks to the hospital and adjacent church was doubtlessly the sweat and tears of cheap Korean labor hired by the church. The hospital, as far as I could gather, has no records pre-dating WWII. I am still not sure whether to think of the peninsular settlement as something of a leprosarium-cum-ashram or an internment camp several steps up from the veritable penal colony for lepers that was established on Sorok-do, a small island in the province.
Certainly the colonial government’s presence was strongly felt. There was a famous megalomaniacal Japanese director of the hospital on Sorok-do (that is, elsewhere) who was assassinated by his patients during WWII. Likewise I remember a picture that my grandfather showed me of a Japanese officer who was assassinated by a patient of my great grandfather’s.
My confidence in my ability or wherewithal to truly unearth these stories in a meaningful sense and weave together a meaningful portrait of the leprosarium is thin. It would take a more savvy individual than I more time than I have to truly work towards that end. In the mean time, speculation makes for fine stories.
To this day former patients live in the settlement around the hospital, though the majority have passed away or were resettled elsewhere many years ago. Yeosu is famous for its beautiful coastline, and were it not for this settlement it should have become prime real estate for some hotels. On this day, the village elderly were said to have been taken on an outing to the hills for tanp’ungnori, or “maple viewing,” a seasonal pastime of watching the changing colors of the leaves. The village is accented with a plethora of ripe orange persimmons standing on bare winter branches.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Joji was a man thought to be a woman
So, funny story...
I arrived at Kwangju Christian Hospital (Kwangju Kidok Byeongweon) this morning after spending last night in Motel Windmill, a reasonably priced "love motel" on Kwangju's motel strip. I failed to meet up with a couch that I had arranged to crash on, feeling pretty bad that I made my guests show up at the bus stop when I wouldn't be there, having missed my train in Seoul by five minutes.
I was told by Dr. Kim to go to the third floor nursing department and mention who I was. I was relayed between several people who had no idea who I was, and who were no doubt very frustrated with my minimal Korean. Finally I was relayed to the first guy who walked by who could speak good English, Mr. Choi. Mr. Choi took me around looking for people who would know who I was. We gathered an entourage of about 4 managerial staff and finally got to a receptionist who had been expecting me (to be fair, I believe Dr. Kim had told them to expect me three days ago. I didn't have their direct contact so I have been hustling to get my papers pushed through Seoul's bureaucracy in order to get down to Kwangju).
The receptionist explained to everybody that they had been expecting a descendant of Dr. RM Wilson, Director of the hospital from 1910 to 1926, who would be writing about Dr. Wilson.
Now, hindsight being 20/20, I can definitely look back and see some flags for the misunderstanding that ensued. Though Dr. Kim (of Aeyangweon hospital) and I have been corresponding for over a year, our correspondences have been brief. I believe I thoroughly explained who I was over a year ago when I originally applied to the Fulbright, and then later when I got the grant in April I told him that I would be coming to Korea in about 5 months. So I don't fault him for forgetting that I was a great grandson of Dr. Rober Manton Wilson. When he told me that the Kwangju Kidok Byeongweon had graciously reserved a room in the nurse's dormitory, I joked with many friends about getting a beautiful Korean woman as a roommate. But it did not occur to me that they would have actually assigned me a room in the female nurse's dorm.
After the 4 men in business suits and several secretaries puzzled over who I was, why I had a Japanese name, and where I was from, I was escorted into Dr. Park Byeongnan's office. She has the air of a Korean matriarch, and her presence induces a natural deference, even despite her soft feminine features. Her office with a large Desk and a circle of chairs in front of it. She explained to me, "we had been expecting you to come here, but we thought you were a girl." After some discussion, she decided that she could find accomodations for me in a male dormitory, but I would have to come back that afternoon.
So now I'm getting ready to check out of the love motel a 3:00 and go back. I will also try to negotiate Korean lessons at the local university, which seem intense (four hours per day) and are heard to be a very good deal at ~1000 USD for a quarter of instruction, something like 200 hours of class time. In fact, that's a really good deal...
The good news is that I believe that they are only expecting me to be writing about my Great grandfather, not to be volunteering in the hospital. I do want to volunteer, to get experience, but I think volunteering and taking intensive language classes from the get-go would be a little much for me. So I may postpone volunteering until I go back to Seoul's Severance Hospital, or until I have more confidence in my Korean and more familiarity with my surroundings.
I will try to talk with the teacher today about whether I can enroll in mid-session or if I have to wait for December when Winter Quarter starts.
From now on I think I will sign all my correspondences in Korea "Mr. Joji Kohjima" to avoid further confusion...
I arrived at Kwangju Christian Hospital (Kwangju Kidok Byeongweon) this morning after spending last night in Motel Windmill, a reasonably priced "love motel" on Kwangju's motel strip. I failed to meet up with a couch that I had arranged to crash on, feeling pretty bad that I made my guests show up at the bus stop when I wouldn't be there, having missed my train in Seoul by five minutes.
I was told by Dr. Kim to go to the third floor nursing department and mention who I was. I was relayed between several people who had no idea who I was, and who were no doubt very frustrated with my minimal Korean. Finally I was relayed to the first guy who walked by who could speak good English, Mr. Choi. Mr. Choi took me around looking for people who would know who I was. We gathered an entourage of about 4 managerial staff and finally got to a receptionist who had been expecting me (to be fair, I believe Dr. Kim had told them to expect me three days ago. I didn't have their direct contact so I have been hustling to get my papers pushed through Seoul's bureaucracy in order to get down to Kwangju).
The receptionist explained to everybody that they had been expecting a descendant of Dr. RM Wilson, Director of the hospital from 1910 to 1926, who would be writing about Dr. Wilson.
Now, hindsight being 20/20, I can definitely look back and see some flags for the misunderstanding that ensued. Though Dr. Kim (of Aeyangweon hospital) and I have been corresponding for over a year, our correspondences have been brief. I believe I thoroughly explained who I was over a year ago when I originally applied to the Fulbright, and then later when I got the grant in April I told him that I would be coming to Korea in about 5 months. So I don't fault him for forgetting that I was a great grandson of Dr. Rober Manton Wilson. When he told me that the Kwangju Kidok Byeongweon had graciously reserved a room in the nurse's dormitory, I joked with many friends about getting a beautiful Korean woman as a roommate. But it did not occur to me that they would have actually assigned me a room in the female nurse's dorm.
After the 4 men in business suits and several secretaries puzzled over who I was, why I had a Japanese name, and where I was from, I was escorted into Dr. Park Byeongnan's office. She has the air of a Korean matriarch, and her presence induces a natural deference, even despite her soft feminine features. Her office with a large Desk and a circle of chairs in front of it. She explained to me, "we had been expecting you to come here, but we thought you were a girl." After some discussion, she decided that she could find accomodations for me in a male dormitory, but I would have to come back that afternoon.
So now I'm getting ready to check out of the love motel a 3:00 and go back. I will also try to negotiate Korean lessons at the local university, which seem intense (four hours per day) and are heard to be a very good deal at ~1000 USD for a quarter of instruction, something like 200 hours of class time. In fact, that's a really good deal...
The good news is that I believe that they are only expecting me to be writing about my Great grandfather, not to be volunteering in the hospital. I do want to volunteer, to get experience, but I think volunteering and taking intensive language classes from the get-go would be a little much for me. So I may postpone volunteering until I go back to Seoul's Severance Hospital, or until I have more confidence in my Korean and more familiarity with my surroundings.
I will try to talk with the teacher today about whether I can enroll in mid-session or if I have to wait for December when Winter Quarter starts.
From now on I think I will sign all my correspondences in Korea "Mr. Joji Kohjima" to avoid further confusion...
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